Northumberland

A poem of nostalgia for the sea breezes and yellow gorse of Northumberland.

1918

Queen Victoria 1837-1901 to King George VI 1936-1952

Introduction

War-poet Wilfrid Gibson never served abroad, and was in fact accepted for the army only at his fifth application, in 1917. These short verses do not come from his war-themed collections (though many reflect that subject) but from a set remembering Northumberland, the county of his birth in Hexham.

HEATHERLAND and bentland,*
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.

Land of singing waters,
And words from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.

Heatherland and bentland,
And valley rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.

From ‘Whin’, by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962). Thanks to Northumberland Cottage for the reference.

Bent-grass (Agrostis) is a very common kind of stiff, coarse grass. Bentland is an area of bent-grass, or simply a term for heathland in general.

Précis
Wilfrd Gibson writes nostalgically of Northumberland, the county in which he was born, and wishing he might return there. His memories are of the countryside, the broad moorland and the fields, and also of the coast, implying that it was overlooking the sea that his verses often came to him.
Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

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